Silver Linings
by Sorceress Fantasia
Summary: Done for LJ's omnichallenge. Covering his life from his trooper days to the events of Advent Children, 19 drabbles, 11 icons. All done in tribute of Cloud Strife.
1. PreGame

Title: Silver Lining

Author: Sorceress Fantasia

Rating: PG

Warnings: Possible spoilers. Slight angst for some, humour for others.

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or any of their characters, as much as I would like to.

Summary: Done for LJ's omni-challenge. Covering his life from his trooper days to the events of Advent Children, 19 drabbles, 11 icons. All done in tribute of Cloud Strife.

* * *

**_Pre-Game_**

**03. Nibelheim **

Cloud remembered hating his hometown that never had accepted him.

He remembered hating the people there who either ignored him or loathed his very existence.

He also remembered hating the small town traditions that made it almost impossible for his single mother and himself to assimilate into, and also the ways the gossipmongers would spread rumours about them being the devil's spawn.

But when Cloud saw his hometown that had never accepted him engulfed in flames like hell's inferno, when he saw the people who ignored and loathed him drowning in pools of their blood, and when he saw the man who walked away so carelessly with his sword dyed red without remorse…

…Cloud regretted ever leaving his home.

* * *

**06. Book **

It was the worst kept secret in the whole platoon.

Everyone knew Cloud Strife was totally in love with the huge, standard SOLDIER buster sword, even if the blond didn't seem like he could lift the sword off the ground for more than a minute. Or if he could lift it up in the first place. That was one sword that looked bigger and maybe weighed heavier than the kid did.

Cloud's platoon mates were all there when they first saw that sword, swung so nonchalantly off the hand of a SOLDIER first class. They had passed by the first class' private training area on their way to drills, and everyone saw how Cloud's eyes positively lit up, much like a child who had been guided into a world of toys. In fact, they wagered that if Cloud was a puppy, he'd be wagging his tail and barking happily at the sight of that huge sword.

Love at first sight, they all said.

So on Cloud's fifteenth birthday, it was no surprise that they presented him with a guidebook on mastering the buster sword.

And it was even less of a surprise that upon unwrapping his present, Cloud showed them his first smile since entering Shinra.

* * *

**08. Card **

The daily workings of the Shinra military resembled schools in many ways, and one of the most obvious ways were the use of report cards.

Thank goodness those damn things didn't require their parents' or guardian's signature, because Cloud wasn't sure how his mother would react to seeing his slightly below average results.

After all that money and time spent sending you here for training, this is all I get? He imagined she would say, even though Cloud knew his mother didn't really care about such things, just as long as her only son was safe and sound.

"Really? And how are you doing? Are you eating well?" That was something he knew she would say, and it was something he had heard her say many times over whenever he scrounged up enough money for that long-distance phone call.

But while his safety was all she wanted, Cloud wanted more. That report card was like a rain, no wait… it was a frigging torrent over his parade. His dreams of acing his tests and joining the ranks of SOLDIER on his first try were probably somewhere drowning in all that water.

So when Zack, the ever-optimist and concerned friend, bounced over, Cloud quickly shoved his card away.

* * *

**13. Practice **

"Good morning, Sir."

"Good morning, Sir!"

"Good **morning**, Sir!"

"Good morning, _Sir_!"

Cloud bit his bottom lip as he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. Something still wasn't right with the way he said it…

"_Good_ morning, Sir."

"Good morning, **Sir**!"

As Cloud continued to practice by himself, his bunkmates were all quietly perched outside the bathroom because they didn't want to disturb the blond in his daily practices even though some of them really needed to visit the loo. And they didn't have the heart to tell him that no matter how much he practiced, he was probably still going to be stammering in front of the general, because seriously, if Cloud was still stammering after their tenth meeting (courtesy of Zack, who was their mutual friend), then he was going to continue stammering for a long time.

* * *

**14. SOLDIER **

Seriously, whoever came up with the standard-issued buster sword for SOLDIER should try swinging this monster himself. Did that crazy guy even understand the stress its weight exerted on the recruits?

…Then again, recruits weren't supposed to be playing around with those monsters. Recruits were mostly given much smaller swords to practice with, and those were probably only one-tenth the weight of a buster sword, which made it much easier and feasible for the newbies to use.

That was the difference between SOLDIERs and recruits.

And it was the difference that Cloud sought to narrow, by hook or by crook.

Even if the damn sword was too huge for him to swing properly. Right now, it was like, the sword was too attached to the ground to leave it, and that was giving Cloud some problems with regards to lifting the sword. And whenever he managed to lift and swing it, it resembled a hurling a discus rather than swinging a sword, so Cloud was sort of getting pulled along by the weapon.

"Spike, you'd better stop it. Your body can't take the weight of a buster sword yet," Zack said, hovering around his friend like a nervous mother hen, always ready to dodge an accidental swing of the sword. "C'mon! You can do this again when you're in SOLDIER. Not right now." He suppressed a yelp when the sword seemed to be heading for him again, and he quickly ducked.

Like a boulder, the buster sword fell to the ground with a loud crash and Cloud slumped down beside it. Irked, he gave it a kick, to which Zack cried indignantly at the mistreatment of his beloved weapon.

Zack was so caught up with checking his sword for any scratches that he didn't notice the way Cloud was peering at him.

"Zack?"

"What?"

"Do you love your buster sword?"

"Well, of course I do. It's my baby!"

"You're obsessed with it…" Cloud uttered under his breath. "Anyway, you have heard the rumour about why SOLDIERs are so attached to their buster swords, have you?"

The tone got Zack glancing up at his friend suspiciously, eyes narrowed. "Rumour."

Cloud nodded. "Rumour."

"What… rumour?" Zack had a feeling he didn't really want to know, but he wasn't about to let Cloud leave him dangling in midair like that. It was almost cruel to not sate his curiosity.

Realization dawned on the blond, his eyes twinkling mischievously and his lips curled up in a lopsided grin.

"Everyone's been saying… that SOLDIERS have buster swords for, well… compensation."

Zack's jaw dropped. A few minutes later, when his mind finally came back to him, he chuckled nervously and mumbled, "Wonder what Sephiroth would say to that…"

* * *

**20. Bar**

The first time Zack tried dragging him to a bar on the weekends, Cloud had shook his head skeptically and politely refused.

The second time Zack tried, Cloud had given him a disbelieving look, rolled his eyes and turned to walk away.

The third time, Cloud just slapped his forehead and went back to his room.

So when it came to the fourth time, Cloud thought he had had quite enough.

"Zack, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm underage. I can't drink."

Zack, who finally understood why his friend kept refusing to go down to his favourite bar with him, stared at him wide-eyed before guffawing.

"Spike, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm underage too. But in Midgar, if you can see over the counter to order your drinks, you're old enough to drink it. And if you're wearing a Shinra uniform, you can have any drinks you want even if you can't see over the counter."

When Cloud blushed, Zack gave him a good once-over.

"With your height, I don't think we'll need to bring books for you to stand on, do we?"

Cloud threw a shoe at him.

* * *

**29. Future **

After five whole years of experiments, drugs and mako, escape felt like a gift from the gods. The happiness lasted only until when Cloud remembered that he had long been abandoned by those of higher powers; he wouldn't have lost his everything and became a lab rat if there had been a god looking after him in the first place.

As Zack drags him across the continents, dodging Shinra troops here and there, sleeping on the muddy ground, eating barely cooked animals unfortunate enough to cross their paths and the occasional wild fruits, Cloud wonders, vaguely, if there is a point to his life anymore.

How many times has he tried to tell Zack to leave him and just escape alone? How many times has he wanted to tell his best friend that he's dragging them both down? That he's going to get them both caught?

But it's so difficult to think, much less talk coherently through the haze of mako that's always enshrouding his mind.

Whenever he tries to talk, only barely audible gurgles flow out of his lips, and Zack would look at him sadly before promising to find a way to help him.

And whenever Cloud sees that look, hear those words, he knows he would willingly follow his friend to the ends of the world.

Even if it means dodging Shinra troops here and there, sleeping on the muddy ground, eating barely cooked animals unfortunate enough to cross their paths and the occasional wild fruits.

Even if that's all his future will be.

-tbc-

**A/N: **After spending 7 years away from writing FF7 fics, I'm finally back... with drabbles. XD 2 more time periods to go: In-game and Post-game.


	2. InGame

Title: Silver Lining

Author: Sorceress Fantasia

Rating: PG

Warnings: Possible spoilers. Slight angst for some, humour for others.

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or any of their characters, as much as I would like to.

Summary: Done for LJ's omni-challenge. Covering his life from his trooper days to the events of Advent Children, 19 drabbles, 11 icons. All done in tribute of Cloud Strife.

* * *

**_In-Game _**

**01. ****Child **

Sometimes he really hated his friends.

They were all so experienced and wise in the way of the world, and yet it was he who always became the leader. Somehow, one way or another, Cloud would end up being the one to take responsibility for anything and everything happening to the world almost like it was a god-given task and he was obliged to bear the burden alone.

Why couldn't someone like Cid take the reins sometimes? Even though the pilot was a chain smoker and had the largest known vocabulary for vulgarity, he was also one of the most experienced fighters on the team, not to mention responsible.

Or maybe even Barret? He had been the leader of AVALANCHE before, hadn't he?

And if he was too hot-headed, Tifa was still around to lend her advice and help out as much as she could.

Surely, anybody but Cloud would be suitable to lead the team to fight Jenova and Sephiroth. But every time he tried to hand the reins over, he would be shot down like a hapless bird and his suggestion brushed off as though it was a mere joke.

Didn't they understand?

Cloud was no adult.

His time had stilled in those five years of experiments under Hojo's careful manipulations, and while he had broken out of the laboratory with the body of a twenty-one-year-old, his mind remained that of a sixteen-year-old teenager's.

He was no adult.

And that was why he hated his friends.

* * *

**02. Smile **

Cloud honestly couldn't remember the last time he had smiled.

It was such a simple thing to do, just a small upturn of one's lips. A curve, a curl, a tug.

Some babies learned to smile before they even learned how to cry. Some people smiled their days away.

Then there were those who never smiled an honest smile in their entire lives.

Sephiroth was one of those. He smirked, he sneered, but he never smiled. It was like he had never learned how to. Or perhaps he was forbidden to smile. Shinra didn't want smiling generals that seemed too human, after all.

Zack came close to a smile, but even he didn't really smile. Zack either grinned or laughed, depending on the situation and how happy he was. But it remained that he never smiled. Smiling, it seemed, wasn't enough to express himself and his occasional bouts of contagious happiness.

Only Aeris did, offering him smiles so sweet and sincere that sometimes he had trouble registering that they were all directed towards him. It made him want to smile too.

But whenever Cloud lounged around in her church for a glimpse of her memory, he found himself unable to.

* * *

**15. Jenova**

If Nibelheim was the beginning of Cloud's nightmares, then Jenova was no doubt the beginning of Sephiroth's.

Cloud supposed he would have gone crazy too, had he found that his mother was such a… such an abomination, such a freak of nature. No wait, Jenova wasn't part of this planet, so she wasn't part of nature. So that made her a huge, mutated alien virus. Joy.

No wonder Sephiroth went insane.

But Jenova wasn't his real mother.

Lucrecia was.

That shell of what Cloud could tell was once a beautiful woman. Kind, sweet, gentle Lucrecia.

If only Sephiroth had met her.

* * *

**17. AVALANCHE**

Cloud honestly thought he could remain unattached to anyone. It was just a job, he told himself. And once he got the money, he would leave and find another job, preferably one that had higher pay and benefits. He was a mercenary, and he wasn't supposed to get emotionally involved with the people he met on the job. They were just his meal tickets.

But Jesse had been a sweet lady, even if she had given him some trouble before.

Wedge was a friendly fellow whose ears perked up at the smell of food.

And Biggs was a gung-ho kind of guy, fighting for what he believed would lead to a better world.

AVALANCHE was true to its name, for with just three simple people, it had completely swept away Cloud's earlier way of life, whether he liked it or not.

* * *

**19. Meteor**

Cloud hates looking up into the sky.

Because every time he does, he doesn't see meteor hanging above them, ready to crash down onto their planet.

Instead, he sees Aeris. He sees Zack. He sees his past self.

And when he closes his eyes to block out the images, his mind continues to feed him with images of his failure, his naivety, his weakness.

He wants out.

But he can't.

* * *

**21. Reunion**

Hatred came a second too late. Shame didn't come until after he had finished. Regret came even before he had gotten there.

As Cloud walked up to the slumbering Sephiroth, the man he had once looked up to with wide, disbelieving and starry eyes, he found his emotions still and nonexistent. Had the revelation of his true identity as a clone –and a failed one at that- robbed him of the ability to feel, and instead, gave him a heart that was like a pool of dead water?

This was the reunion, the one which he had been summoned to.

The black materia slipped away from him.

-tbc-

**A/N:** More to come soon. And they'll be happier ones, I promise. XD Anyway, someone asked me what the buster sword compensated for (mentionedin a drabble in the previous part), and honestly, if you don't get the erm, joke, please don't ask. It's better that you don't find out so soon if you don't know. XDD


	3. PostGame

Title: Silver Lining

Author: Sorceress Fantasia

Rating: PG

Warnings: Possible spoilers. Slight angst for some, humour for others.

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or any of their characters, as much as I would like to.

Summary: Done for LJ's omni-challenge. Covering his life from his trooper days to the events of Advent Children, 19 drabbles, 11 icons. All done in tribute of Cloud Strife.

* * *

**_Post-Game _**

**04. Song**

Marlene and Denzel recently got infatuated with a nursery rhyme, and they would hum it wherever they were, whatever they were doing. It was a song they had picked up from the other children they played with, and once it got into their heads, it just wouldn't leave them alone.

And the song was seriously contagious too.

A few days after they started alternating between singing and humming that tune, Tifa began doing the same when she was cleaning the place and washing the dishes.

Cloud just enjoyed lounging around and listening to them sing and hum.

* * *

**07. Family **

Sometimes Cloud wasn't sure what he was to his friends.

During the crazy chase around the world for Sephiroth, everyone had made him into a leader. Not an extremely competent one, but still a leader nonetheless. And somehow, one way or another, he became the one to look for when troubles turned up knocking on their doors. Like whether they should climb up the Gaea's Cliffs when they were already so exhausted or risk letting the silver-haired general get away, or even if they should buy one more bottle of potion because they were a little short on funds.

Then, after they had defeated Sephiroth and helped avert the meteor crisis, everyone suddenly treated him like a kid.

Tifa was always worried if he was eating well. Yuffie wondered if he was overworking himself, and sometimes she would leave him voice messages on the phone and ask him to slow down a bit. When he wasn't busy, Reeve would call too to offer his help regarding his Strife Delivery Services. Barret would rather kill himself than admit it out loud, but he was probably worried if Cloud had disappeared. Even Cid had called on several occasions and would slam the phone after throwing a curt but strangely endearing question: "So you're still alive, eh?"

And sometimes, he was treated as a partner-in-crime.

Like the one time Denzel and Marlene had asked him to buy a cake home for Tifa's birthday, to which Tifa had responded with a warm smile and hugs for all of them. Then there were those few occasions when Barret warned him on threats of castration about his surprise visits to his daughter, or even the time when Yuffie had roped him into helping her write up a contract that would give her everyone's unused materias.

His friends were probably the ones who put the fun into dysfunctional.

Then again, that was what made them his family.

…Probably.

* * *

**10. Routine **

It was almost a habit of sorts now.

One of the, if not /the, first things tumbling out of his mouth whenever he picked up his phone was, "Strife Delivery Services. We deliver anything."

Vincent had gone completely silent when he got that. He probably wasn't expecting that when he had decided to try out his newly-purchased cell phone on Cloud. Both Cid and Barret had chewed him out for being a workaholic. Yuffie just guffawed and teasingly asked him if the services included delivering himself to her doorsteps.

Cloud was just glad that Red XIII didn't do phone calls, because he was sure his friend would probably use that as a springboard and leap right into some philosophical or psychological topics. It was probably difficult for him to call because of his paws.

And then when Marlene got that damned tagline when she called to ask if he would be home for dinner, she insisted that it was too monotonous, and it would probably be great for his business if he would change the way he said that line.

He ended up spending the rest of the night reciting that line over and over again, in different enunciations and emphasizes.

* * *

**24. War **

After walking into the war zone that used to be Denzel's room, Cloud just sighed, shook his head, and walked out. After he had ordered Yuffie, who was visiting and ended up becoming Denzel and Marlene's temporary playmate, to clean up the room, that is.

He ignored Yuffie's indignant cries that she wasn't the only one responsible for the mess and so Cloud should have ordered the children to clean up as well.

Those were his kids, alright?

* * *

**28. Dress **

The last time Tifa had dragged Cloud to the markets to buy Marlene a new dress for her birthday, he had been highly reluctant. Not that he didn't love the little girl who was so much like a younger sister and even a daughter, of course, but the idea of spending time and shopping for a dress was something he abhorred.

When Tifa directed him to a white dress off the racks of a small shop and asked him what he thought about it, he sighed and replied that dresses were not something he was familiar with. Wariness flooded him at the strange gleam in Tifa's eyes.

She promptly pulled out a purple dress and asked him again, "And is this something you're familiar with? Oh, I almost forgot. We'd probably need a wig too to jog your memory."

As she giggled and paid for the purple dress, Cloud just felt like digging a hole and hide.

* * *

**30. Turning 30 **

Cloud had honestly never thought about turning thirty.

It was like he was still a Shinra trooper just a moment ago, and the minute he turned around, he found himself drowning in the many congratulatory yells on his thirtieth birthday and choking from the occasional gruff and loud slaps on his back. Seventh Heaven had probably never seen a noisier day.

After escaping Yuffie's idea of pranking the birthday boy, Cloud got a temporary respite when he went upstairs to deposit all the presents from his friends. Of course, Marlene and Denzel had both extracted a promise from him to come back down as soon as possible with their doe eyes attack, so he wouldn't be safe for long.

But when he dropped everything onto his bed, and was about to leave, he was surprised to see a glint on his table. He walked up to it, wary that it was one of Yuffie's pranks, only to feel his body stiffen at the sight of what exactly it was. The light from the moon had reflected off a small silver ear stud, one he had seen /him/ wear before, and next to the little accessory was a small but resilient flower, the types that grew in /her/ garden.

When Marlene toddled upstairs, almost miffed that the birthday boy was absent from his own party for far too long, she blinked when she saw Cloud staring intently at something in his hands as though in a daze. She never found out what they were, but it wasn't important, because Cloud had given her a warm, sorely missed smile before leading her back to the heart of the party.

-owari-

**A/N: **Even though this is one day early, happy birthday, Cloud. I'll always be your biggest fan. 3


End file.
